New York City: a tall building engulfed in flames, trapped workers on the upper floors leaping to their deaths. 9-11? No, 1911. It was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the most devastating disasters in American history. And it happened 100 years ago today.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a sweatshop where hundreds of young women, most of them immigrants, slaved over sewing machines and work tables to make the popular blouses known as shirtwaists. When the fire started the women couldn’t get out, since the sweatshop owner had locked the doors. Fire hoses were too short to reach the highest floors where the fire raged. The trapped employees crowded onto a flimsy fire escape, which then collapsed under the weight. Desperately, with the wall of flames behind them, women started leaping to their deaths. A total of 146 garment workers died that day, most of them young women.

The Triangle fire was a watershed event. Labor laws, the women’s movement, public safety—all were transformed by the disaster.

Cornell University has an excellent resource site about the fire: Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire. It includes a photo archive (with graphic images, so be warned).

The Triangle fire had a galvanizing effect on Frances Perkins, who went on to become the first female Secretary of Labor (and the first female Cabinet member, period). Perkins was the architect of much of the New Deal, including Social Security.

The March issue of DC Spotlight is online, and the “In the Spotlight” featured person is none other than our own Dr. Lynette Long, president of EVE. Spotlight Editor-in-Chief Wendy Thompson interviewed Lynette at home, and the result is a fascinating article about the inspiration for EVE, our current projects, the background to the Harriet Tubman Statue Project, and more. Go read!

Thanks to DC Spotlight and Ms. Thompson for this wonderful piece. Here’s the video portion of the interview included with the article:

In all the talk about whether Maryland should replace John Hanson with Harriet Tubman in National Statuary Hall, one mistaken idea keeps cropping up. It’s this notion that John Hanson was really “the first President of the United States.”

No, he wasn’t.

It is ironic that the proponents of this idea, such as Maryland Senator Mike Miller, cast themselves as the guardians of truth, conscientiously defending the past from revisionists who want to “rewrite history.” Ironic because their version of John Hanson is a myth.

The real story goes like this: John Hanson was a delegate from Maryland to the Continental Congress in the early 1780s. As you no doubt recall from high school history class, the Continental Congress was the convention of representatives from the thirteen colonies (later states) which served as a very loose government from 1774 to 1789. This was before the Constitution was adopted, before our republic was actually founded.

Anyway, in 1781 John Hanson was elected president—literally, the presiding officer—of the Congress. That was his title: “president of Congress.” This was not in any sense an executive position; it was a parliamentary role. Hanson was the ninth president of Congress since its inception in 1774, and the third man to occupy the seat following the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in March 1881. He wasn’t the “President of the United States” any more than his predecessor Thomas McKean or his successor Elias Boudinot was. A total of fifteen men served terms as president of Congress, and the reason we don’t remember their names is because the job wasn’t all that important. This was by design: Americans were terrified of central government and abhorred anything that smelled remotely like a dictatorship. They were almost neurotic about it, in fact. The president of Congress simply wasn’t allowed to have any power. …continue reading

(Ed. Note: This op-ed is being published in the Baltimore Sun on Friday, March 11, 2011. See our Harriet Tubman Statue Project for more.)

The Maryland General Assembly has an opportunity to send a new representative to the United States Capitol. This person wouldn’t be a voting member of Congress but would stand tall in the halls of the Capitol and serve as a symbol of freedom, courage and equality to all Americans. This session, the Maryland legislature will decide whether or not to replace the statue of John Hanson that has stood in National Statuary Hall for more than 100 years with one of Harriet Tubman.

National Statuary Hall was established in 1864 by an act of Congress. By law, each state is authorized to furnish two statues of citizens who are “illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services.” Harriet Tubman certainly fits that description. She was an abolitionist, a union spy, a suffragist, and a great Marylander who risked her own life countless times to save the lives of others. John Hanson, a Colonial era farmer and first president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, is represented by one of Maryland’s two statues in the collection. The other statue is of Charles Carroll, another Colonial-era Marylander, who was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Our nation’s Capitol is the symbol of our democracy. In a nation where we believe that anyone can accomplish anything, our government systematically sends the unmistakable message to girls and women that their contributions to our country’s history were insignificant. The enormous Capitol frieze surrounding the Rotunda depicts the history of the United States, celebrating key moments in our history from the nation’s inception to the discovery of flight, and yet there is only one recognizable woman depicted in those paintings: Pocahontas. In Statuary Hall itself, there is only one woman out of 38 statues, and only nine women in the entire Collection of 100 statues displayed throughout the Capitol. …continue reading

Today is the 98th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s death in 1913. The date was designated as national Harriet Tubman Day in 1990.

(Actually, right now every day is Harriet Tubman Day here at EVE, what with the Maryland legislature considering the bill to put Tubman in Statuary Hall. And this would be a perfect time to call some committee members.)

Here’s the bill signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990:

PUBLIC LAW 101-252 –MAR. 13, 1990 104 STAT. 99

Joint Resolution
To designate March 10, 1990, as “Harriet Tubman Day”

Whereas Harriet Ross Tubman was born into slavery in Bucktown, Maryland, in or around the year 1820;

Whereas she escaped slavery in 1849 and became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad;

Whereas she undertook a reported nineteen trips as a conductor, endeavoring despite great hardship and great danger to lead hundreds of slaves to freedom;

Whereas Harriet Tubman became an eloquent and effective speaker on behalf of the movement to abolish slavery;

Whereas she served in the Civil War as a soldier, spy, nurse, scout, and cook, and as a leader in working with newly freed slaves;

Whereas after the War, she continued to fight for human dignity, human rights, opportunity, and justice; and

Whereas Harriet Tubman—whose courageous and dedicated pursuit of the promise of American ideals and common principles of humanity continues to serve and inspire all people who cherish freedom—died at her home in Auburn, New York, on March 10, 1913; Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That March 10, 1990 be designated as “Harriet Tubman Day,” to be observed by the people of the United States with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

Approved March 13, 1990.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY – S.J. Res. 257
Congressional record, Vol. 136 (1990):
Mar. 6, considered and passed Senate.
Mar. 7, considered and passed House.

Happy International Women’s Day! We’re so busy right now trying to get one particular woman enshrined in Statuary Hall that I didn’t have time to write a post. Instead I pulled together some links and videos to share.

IWD.com has an excellent timeline of the history of Women’s Day. The page also includes a video from Russia which highlights how the observance there has morphed into a kind of cross between Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

In other countries, though, Women’s Day still carries political significance:

The National Women’s History Museum offers a more in-depth look at the evolution of the March 8 observance:

If she were a man, Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) would almost certainly be remembered as one of our nation’s most influential Founders. Called the “Conscience of the American Revolution” as well as the “Mother of the Bill of Rights,” she was an intellectual powerhouse whose sheer genius compelled respect. John Adams remarked that she possessed an intellect which “[God] bestows on few of the human race,” and that “of all the geniuses which have yet arisen in America, there has been none superior.” Thomas Jefferson said simply, “I have long possessed evidence of her high station in the ranks of genius.” Neither of these men believed in rights for women, of course; but this particular woman they couldn’t dismiss. She was just too smart.

Mercy Otis was born into the Massachusetts intelligentsia, and her whole family was wrapped up in revolutionary fervor. Her brother, James Otis, was the firebrand who came up with the “no taxation without representation” slogan. Her husband, James Warren, was one of the Sons of Liberty and later served as Paymaster General of the Continental Army. The Warren home was a meeting place for patriots throughout the Revolutionary era, and Mercy and James were close friends of John and Abigail Adams.

Mercy herself contributed to the cause with sharply-written plays and extremely persuasive pamphlets. As a woman, she took care to remain anonymous and allow the public to imagine a male author behind the pungent prose. Privately, though, she was well-known to the other intellectual leaders of the Revolution. She regularly advised and corresponded with John Adams, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and George Washington. …continue reading

Before cotton, there was indigo. The source of South Carolina’s wealth and a mainstay of the American colonial economy before the Revolution, the indigo industry was the brainchild of Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793). She was one of the greatest agricultural innovators of colonial America.

The daughter of a British officer in the West Indies, Eliza Lucas was put in charge of her father’s three South Carolina plantations at the remarkable age of sixteen. Colonel Lucas obviously recognized that his daughter was a prodigy, and the ambitious young woman did not disappoint. Eliza loved botany and was fascinated by agricultural experimentation. She thought in terms of the big picture: she knew that South Carolina needed a cash crop to complement rice, and she saw that the burgeoning world trade in textiles was creating new markets for dyes. Using indigo seeds her father sent her from the West Indies, she embarked on a series of agricultural experiments in growing the new crop. Once she had succeeded in developing a strain of indigo that could be grown commercially in Carolina, she set about mastering the process of rendering and manufacturing the all-important dye.

By 1744, Eliza was ready to share her seeds and her knowledge with other South Carolina planters. The result was an agricultural revolution. In 1745-1746, South Carolina exported 5,000 pounds of indigo dye. By 1748, that number had jumped to 134,118 pounds. By 1775—the eve of American independence—South Carolina was exporting more than a million pounds of indigo every year. …continue reading

Anne Hutchinson (c. 1591-1643) was at the center of the first great theological crisis in Puritan New England: the Antinomian Controversy. A brilliant and outspoken woman who refused to bow to male supremacy, Hutchinson challenged the tyrannical Puritan government and championed freedom of conscience. She has been called the first feminist in the New World, but she was also a model for the religious and civil liberty of all citizens.

The short essay about Hutchinson in Harvard Magazine is excellent, as is the following brief biography from the Library of Congress: …continue reading

Pocahontas (c. 1596-1617) stands at the beginning of written Anglo-American history. She welcomed the English to Jamestown, acted as peacemaker between her tribe and the newcomers, married one of the colonists, and even represented her people in England. But who was she really?

Thanks to Disney, most people think of Pocahontas as a cartoon princess in a buckskin mini-dress who falls in love with Captain John Smith. The truth is quite different. Pocahontas was an eleven-year-old child when the English arrived in 1607, John Smith was a crude and violent adventurer, and there was no love affair between them. Even the story about Pocahontas saving Smith’s life was probably false; historians (both Anglo and Native) strongly suspect Smith invented the tale much later.

Pocahontas’s real name was Matoaka—Pocahontas was a nickname—and she was the daughter of the man known as Powhatan, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Indians. She was certainly a highly privileged little person, but not exactly a princess in the European sense. Powhatan society was matrilineal, so power passed from the chief to his sister’s children, not to his own offspring. (Women could also be chiefs; this was not a patriarchal society.)

As a child Pocahontas was very friendly to the English colonists at Jamestown, making a strong impression with her high spirits, generosity, and poise. When she reached marriageable age she wedded a Powhatan man named Kocoum. According to the oral history preserved by the Mattaponi tribe (descendants of the Powhatans), she bore a child referred to as Little Kocoum. …continue reading

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